Category: Geekery

Found in Space

Things I’ll do for a new computer, honestly…

When the joint European probe finally arrived at Lagrange Point four most commentators expected to find at least something. Interplanetary dust. A few rocks. Maybe even some ice – although almost everyone agreed that was a long shot. What we didn’t expect was shoes. Eight of them. Not pairs either – single shoes, floating idly in the gravitational void. Once the initial shock passed, the ESA set it all off again by announcing that they each had a desiccated human foot inside. Well, all apart from one. They said that contained a bear paw, but I mean – come on – that’s just crazy…

— Boing Boing 100-word fiction competition

Fly Season, Beetle Season

Biological controls for the win.

The fly season is on us again.

Way back before Europeans screwed things up, Australia didn’t really have a problem with flies. Water being scarce down here, animals didn’t waste it on excrement – kangaroos and other native animals generally produce small, dry pellets unsuitable for flies’ purposes. The only place flies could breed was in animal carcases and while there were enough of these to keep the flies in business, there were never enough to let them breed up to plague proportions.

Then the Europeans turned up and brought with them all those water squandering northern hemisphere animals like cows and horses and sheep – which wandered around the continent dropping big steaming pats everywhere. The flies thought that they’d died and gone to fly heaven and Australia became a place where you couldn’t open your mouth in summer without three or four dozen of the damn things plunging in and trying to claim your lungs in the name of all flykind.

After decades of this kind of thing the government finally decided to do something about it. They engaged in years of trials and careful testing (we at least learnt a lesson from the cane toad fiasco) and eventually a species of small, inoffensive dung beetle was imported from Africa and distributed across the country. Confronted with massive piles of excrement that the ecosystem was totally failing to deal with the beetles thought they’d died and gone to beetle heaven and got on with what they do best – rolling it up into balls and burying it.

Result? Fly numbers plummeted and summer became bearable again.

Except for October.

You see the flies start breeding in late September. The dung beetles don’t start breeding until late October. This means that for one month of the year the flies are back in force and we all suffer.

But hey, at least we can comfort ourselves remembering that all of summer used to be like that.

I can’t stop listening to this…

I can’t stop listening to this…

I’m not very good at singing songs but here’s a try…

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,
You must first invent the universe,
Space is filled with a network of wormholes,
You might emerge somewhere else in space,
Somewhen else in time,

The sky calls to us,
If we do not destroy ourselves,
We will one day,
Venture to the stars,

A still more glorious dawn awaits,
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise,
A morning filled with four hundred billion suns,
The rising of the milky way,

The cosmos is full beyond measure,
With elegant truths,
Of exquisite interrelationships,
Of the awesome machinery of nature,

I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos,
In which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky,

The brain does much more than just recollect,
It intercompares, synthesises, analyses,
It generates abstractions,
The simplest thought like the concept of the number one,
Has an elaborate, logical underpinning,
The brain has its own language for testing the structure and consistency of the world,

A still more glorious dawn awaits,
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise,
A morning filled with four hundred billion suns,
The rising of the milky way,

The sky calls to us,
If we do not destroy ourselves,
We will one day,
Venture to the stars,

For thousands of years,
People have wondered about the universe,
Did it stretch out forever?
Or was there a limit?
From the big bang to black holes,
From dark matter to a possible big crunch,
Our image of the universe today is full of strange sounding ideas,

How lucky we are to live in this time,
The first moment in human history,
When we are, in fact, visiting other worlds,

A still more glorious dawn awaits,
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise,
A morning filled with four hundred billion suns,
The rising of the milky way,

A still more glorious dawn awaits,
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise,
A morning filled with four hundred billion suns,
The rising of the milky way,

The surface of the earth,
Is the shore of a cosmic ocean,
Recently we have waded a little way out,
And the water seems inviting…

Foolish Musical Ideas

If I had the tools I’d do it myself.

Back in ancient historical era known as the 80s, British House giants Cauty and Drummond (perhaps you remember them as the KLF – also known as the Justified Ancients of Mumu, and furthermore known as the JAMs) sat down to create a House remix of the Doctor Who theme.

After messing around with it for some hours and getting nowhere they realised that it’s in triplet time, and you can’t do House in triplet time. So they threw the House idea out the window and just mashed the theme up with perhaps the most famous triplet rock song ever – Garry “I want to touch your children” Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part 2.

The result was one of the most successful and annoying novelty tracks of all time – Doctorin’ the Tardis – which transformed them into millionaires almost overnight.

The reason I mention this is that in the shower yesterday morning I realised that Marilyn “Oo! I’m so Evil!” Manson’s Beautiful People is also in triplet time. Which means you could easily do a Doctor Who – Beautiful People mashup!

Go on! What are you waiting for?! đŸ˜€

The Invisible Wandjina of Coode Hill

You know, I can’t remember if it was Google Maps or Google Earth actually…

My life is getting more and more frantic the closer I get to my trip to the UK for Ali’s wedding (I have mentioned that on here before, right?). It’s madness at work, and madness at home as I try and get things sorted to jet out in the early hours of Monday next week (that is the Monday after the next Monday – we really need some more precise time-based terminology in this language).

Anyway I had reason today to think about the Wandjinna of Coode Hill. So I went looking for it.

Coode Hill is what I call the fairly impressive rise on Coode Street between Broun Avenue and Railway Parade in Bayswater. I don’t think it has an official title, but I’m all for giving local names to local features. As such I regard Coode Hill to be an outflung western arm of the Collier Hills, overlooking the Chisholm Valley and the Meltham Basin (names you won’t find on any map). Coode Hill is fairly impressive – rising a good 20 metres (65 odd feet) above the surrounding landscape, and its eastern side is particularly impressive, the hill having been carved out to make a nice, flat cricket pitch at Hillcrest Reserve. This cliff was the location of the Wandjina.

What’s a Wandjina you ask? Well, for the last few years, someone (or more likely a number of someones) has been painting Wandjinas all over the northern suburbs. Wandjinas are the ancestral creator spirits of several Aboriginal nations up in the northwest, and are famously depicted in sacred rock art sites throughout the Kimberly. The mysterious artist has been adding them to walls, bins, rocks and even trees scattered all around the place. This has caused a fair bit of debate and consternation within the Aboriginal community – according to some Elders the Wandjina is a sacred symbol and should not be painted by anyone who hasn’t been properly initiated. Other people (such as myself) have watched on with interest, and kept an eye out for new ones – there are quite a few sets of them on Flickr.

In any case, the biggest Wandjina I’ve seen was either daubed or painted on the slopes of Coode Hill for a while. I know this because although I never saw it with my own eyes, it was clearly visible on Google Maps.

So today I went to take another look at it, and maybe post a screenshot of it to my Flickr account, only to discover that it was gone! Removed in the latest update of imagery – which I have to admit does a much better job of showing the local area.

So, the Wandjina is lost. I tried looking for it in the historic imagery in Google Earth, but no dice. It has disappeared completely. Boo!!

That’s about all I’ve got to say. Depending on how crazy the next week is my next post may well be from merry olde Englande.

(PS: Aha! Someone else got it!)

Image (S)Hack

At the very least you could have posted your manifesto in *text* guys.

(I would like to apologise in advance for this post – it’s full of ill informed ranting. This is nothing unusual of course, but in this case it’s pretty bad. Hey, why don’t you go and read some other, more sensible post instead? Please?)

Apparently overnight the image hosting site Image Shack has been hacked by a group of people calling themselves “the Anti-Sec movement”. They’ve replaced (presumably) tens of thousands of images hosted on the site with a manifesto opposing the “full disclosure” method of publicising security flaws, and threatening “through mayhem and […] destruction” to force the abandonment of the same.

Well.

On the one hand I have to agree with some of their points. Full disclosure does have its share of problems – the main one being that the black hat hackers and the software companies get the same information at the same time, starting a race to patch the issue before it can be exploited (a race that the black hats usually win). That said, I do have some issues with the Anti-Sec manifesto as it currently stands.

(Edit: As it turns out that’s actually wrong – full disclosure policies almost always have a delay built in so that the companies responsible are told first and get time to patch the hole before the black hats find out about it. So Anti-Sec are basically talking out of an orifice other than their mouths.)

The first is the problem of security through obfuscation. Anti-Sec seems to be suggesting that if you discover a security hole you should shut up and sit on it so that no one can exploit it. This would work fine if it could be guaranteed that you’re the only person who would ever find it. This is, of course, ridiculous. Someone else will discover the same exploit and they may not have the same, upstanding community attitude that you do. The sensible thing would be to report the flaw to the company responsible so they can patch it before the knowledge becomes public. Anti-Sec may well support this method, but their manifesto says nothing about it.

(Edit: Actually they’re actively opposing it.)

The second problem I have is with their methodology. Let me quote…

It is our goal that, through mayhem and the destruction of all exploitative and detrimental communities, companies and individuals, full-disclosure will be abandoned and the security industry will be forced to reform.

How do we plan to achieve this? Through the full and unrelenting, unmerciful elimination of all supporters of full-disclosure and the security industry in its present form. If you own a security blog, an exploit publication website or you distribute any exploits… “you are a target and you will be rm’d. Only a matter of time.”

This isn’t like before. This time everyone and everything is getting owned.

Right. Well, opening a debate is one thing. Opening a debate and then forcibly silencing everyone with a dissenting viewpoint is completely another. And when that forcible silencing is achieved via threats and “unrelenting, unmerciful elimination” it’s basically terrorism.

So, it’ll be interesting to see how this thing plays out. If indeed it does play out and Anti-Sec don’t just vanish into the digital woods they suddenly emerged from like so many other online ‘movements’.

They’ll like it in Seoul

Letting demonic forces loose in the capital of the UK for fun and profit

Ok, so I’ve been thinking (oh-oh) lately about the not terribly successful MMORPG Hellgate London.

For those unfamiliar with it (ie: just about everybody) it’s set in a future London after demons have taken over the Earth. You play as a member of resistance group fighting against the demons with both high power weaponry and magic, and taking shelter in the Underground (which was apparently constructed with demon resistant properties by a farsighted conspiracy of Freemasons).

The game didn’t garner much in the way of praise and the company that made it has now gone bust – although some servers are struggling on in South Korea (is there any game that doesn’t do well in South Korea?). Nonetheless I’ve always thought the basic concept was kind of cool (I am after all a devoted Londiniophile).

Anyway I was thinking about how some games (exploiting the various location technologies present in phones and other handhelds these days) are starting to take advantage of geolocation. And it struck me – how cool would a cut down version of Hellgate London be if you actually had to play it in London?!

Think about it. Your character is sent out to battle some Demons at Trafalgar Square. In order to complete the quest you actually have to physically go to Trafalgar Square. You then sit there outside the National Gallery, fighting demons on your handheld until the quest is complete. Afterwards, when your character needs to rest, trade and replenish supplies you have to physically go to an Underground station (or at least stand outside one – making people pay for train tickets to play the game seems a little harsh).

Now naturally this approach would have some problems. The market would be restricted to people actually in London (although you could probably set up games located in plenty of major cities), there’d be plenty of gamers who wouldn’t be interested in tramping around the streets when they could be sitting inside, sucking down doritos, and the National Gallery might not want hordes of nerds standing outside playing with their iPhones. But for those people who got involved it would be an extra level of immersion – superimposing the game world over the real world in a fairly unprecedented way.

So that’s my idea. I’m sure they’d like it in Seoul.

A Grand Night!

You mean you didn’t figure it out?

So, the other night it was my 20 year high school reunion (which is weird, since I graduated in 1993, but hey, whatever). The entire year (which seemed a lot bigger that I remembered) was assembled in the school gym, waiting for the festivities to begin. After a few minutes the Principal appeared on stage and after some preliminary remarks told us to pair up with our dates from the ’93 graduation ball.

Now this was easier said than done for me, as my date for the graduation ball had fled the state rather than attend with me. As it turned out however she was at the reunion and swung by to say hi (she’s blonde now, go figure). She wouldn’t pair up with me, but that cool by me since we’d been set up by the school in the first place, so I just wandered around nonchalantly, more or less daring the staff to ask why I was by myself.

A few minutes later the staff swung into action and got us to sort ourselves into those ridiculous house lines they used to make us sit in during assemblies. Once we were thus arranged we were made to sit on the floor. The Principal launched into a speech, which was quickly interrupted when he noticed a guy in the green house who (for some reason) had a large, bronze, Chinese incense burner sitting next to him, pumping out a considerable amount of smoke.

The Principal leapt of the stage and – flanked by several staff members – charged towards he of the incense. Unfortunately only half way across the gym he collapsed with what was obviously a massive cardiac arrest. His supporting staff (helped by several parents who were sitting at the back of the gym) rushed to his aid, and he was quickly taken out to an ambulance. We former students – sensing trouble – tried to scatter, but a group of us were corralled by that insane maths teacher I never liked who charged us with tracking down the ne’erdowell whose incense incapacitated out beloved leader.

We started searching around the Gym. After a quick word with the Principal’s son (who I must say didn’t seem overly concerned about his father, being much more worried about his prematurely grey hair) I headed outside to both seek the culprit and see what had changed in the last twenty years. Here I ran into one of the Damiens and the Black Douglas, who were similarly admiring the additions – which seemed chiefly to consist of several staircases, some confusing walls and some excitingly landscaped mounds and pits. We were just exploring these when some joker decided to turn on the water, revealing the pits to be ornamental ponds. I struggled my way out and found myself on the oval, so I headed around to the back entrance of the gym – along with a bunch of other former students.

Despite the distraction of the large radio telescope array that had sprung up on the far side of the oval I noticed some of my comrades in arms from my days back at the SGC in the crowd. Realising that they would be just the people to help track down the incense man I grabbed them and explained the situation. Happy to be united back into our unit we (that is to say myself, Colonel Jack O’Neil, Daniel Jackson and Teal’c) proceeded to the back entrance where the sentry on duty told us entry was prohibited. Our protests that we were the famous SG1 cut no ice until we proved that Teal’c was a Jaffa by pointing out the large scar left on his forehead by the removal of his First Prime insignia. This satisfied the guard and he let us through.

I left the other members of SG1 examining the rear wall of the gym while I checked out the stage. The speaker arrays were extremely loud and I had to block my ears to prevent severe hearing damage. The musicians (by means of gesture) indicated that they were wearing special, German manufactured earplugs. I flew up to the walkway behind the stage, but it was occupied by some girls who knew nothing about the incense man, so I flew back down.

In the main body of the gym a fete was being set up. My mother turned up and explained that she was running my brother and father back home, but she’d come back later to pick me up. I said that it was fine, and I’d find somewhere to crash locally. I decided to take a flight around the gym (aerial surveillance and all that) but the overhead bunting from the fete tents was so thick I couldn’t find a safe place to take off from.

I think I woke up at the point…

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